When Do You Know? By Evan Roberts

By Evan Roberts
Conducted by David Rentz
From C3LA Presents SeeThruLA
October 19th, 2024
St John's Episcopal Cathedral, Los Angeles
I wrote this piece in response to feelings of returning to Los Angeles after leaving grad school in Indiana. Though I have lived in Los Angeles three separate times now, I was surprised to find when I arrived last fall that neither place felt like home for me. The last stanza of text was originally written as an emotional response to the sudden passing of my closest colleague in grad school, my friend Ben Pollack. This work is about loss of connection I felt this past year, with him, with others whom I love, and with a city I feel simultaneously grateful for and emotionally displaced by.
Thank you to the members of C3LA for premiering this piece. Thank you to Saunder Choi and David Saldaña, who offered invaluable compositional feedback.
- Evan Roberts